Chaser denied Royal Wedding Commentary

Comedian Chas Licciardello explains why the ABC was forced to cancel The Chaser's Royal Wedding Commentary.

Transcript

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ALI MOORE, PRESENTER: The ABC has been forced to cancel The Chaser's Royal Wedding Commentary, which was to be broadcast on ABC2 on Friday night, due to restrictions on the use of footage of the wedding.

A senior media advisor to the Royal household told Lateline that conditions prohibit the use of the vision for drama, comedy or satirical purposes.

Joining us in the studio now to explain how this happened is Chas Licciardello from The Chaser.

Chas, thanks for joining us.

CHAS LICCIARDELLO, THE CHASER: I'd love to know how it happened.

ALI MOORE: Well, when did you find out you had a problem?

CHAS LICCIARDELLO: We knew a few days ago that we were in a little bit of strife with the BBC, but thought we'd found ways around it. And we kept on - and then they tapped down on those ways and we played another card, and they tapped down, we played another card. It was about lunchtime today that we took our last card to play and it was a two of spades.

ALI MOORE: Well what were your cards? Where could you have gone?

CHAS LICCIARDELLO: There were other feeds apart from the BBC. Some are fed from the BBC. I don't believe all of them are fed from the BBC, but we went through every single feed, we went through every single kind of broadcast. You don't have to commentate over the wedding itself, you can commentate before the wedding and then show the wedding and then after the wedding.

We tried as many different options as we could, and when it got to today we had no footage to use whatsoever, we couldn't broadcast at all on Friday night with anything to do with the wedding. That's pretty tough conditions.

ALI MOORE: Do you think though that's something's changed? Because if you look at this statement from Clarence House that we've got tonight, it looks like someone stuffed up. I mean, the statement says that it's standard practice to have these clauses regarding these religious ceremonies, and then, "We've not imposed any new restrictions on the use of the Royal wedding service footage and we've not singled out the ABC." Now if that's the case, someone should have known this all along.

CHAS LICCIARDELLO: Well, look, I spent most of my law school years playing ping pong, so maybe I'm not the person to trust, but as far as I'm concerned, the BBC had very different terms to some of the other feeds, and some of the other feeds that we were examining did not have the "comedy restrictions" that they are speaking about a couple of days ago. Now all of a sudden, they seem to have those comedy restrictions.

ALI MOORE: So is there a new contract the ABC's had to sign?

CHAS LICCIARDELLO: Look, I don't know all the details of what the ABC's had to do. I'm not the ABC lawyer. But I do know the ABC today had to sign some kind of guarantee that weren't going to be on air, otherwise they were going to be in big trouble with mum and dad at the BBC.

ALI MOORE: How irreverent were you going to be? I mean, we are talking about the potential future head of state of this country.

CHAS LICCIARDELLO: Yeah, look, there is I think a misapprehension that we were going to do four hours of Princess Di jokes. But that really wasn't our intention because this is a goodwill event, this is an event everyone's looking forward to. It would be not only poor taste, but it'd just alienate our audience if we just went and just were nasty for four hours. And you know what? We've been there before and we know what that's like and we don't want to do it again.

Essentially what we were doing was we were making fun of the media circus, the whole system - it's a ridiculous system, the regal system. We were making fun of almost everyone except for William and Kate themselves because they seem like kind of nice, boring, normal people.

ALI MOORE: Doesn't it strike you as extraordinary though; I mean, the way that this reads, it would appear no-one can use this wedding for any purpose other than very serious reporting. I mean, it's very hard to believe that nowhere around the world is anyone going to use this footage for a little bit of comedy, a little bit of satire, poke a bit of fun at it.

CHAS LICCIARDELLO: Yeah, look, if I was Dame Edna and Ryan Fitzy - people like that on the other networks - I'd be insulted that they're not regarded as comedy, because I think they're funny. So I don't know what's going on.

ALI MOORE: So do we expect to see the wedding that wasn't special coming up on The Chaser, do you think?

CHAS LICCIARDELLO: Ohh, I think it's a little too late. If they'd pulled the pin three or four days ago, we would've come up with a dodgy special, but 48 hours out, it's too late. Even for us, we're too disorganised to put a show together now, I think. But, Lateline commentary, maybe?